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Patti and Art's Grand Tour 2012

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THU 07 JUN Southampton, England "I can do this," I told myself. "I've managed fifty-hour bus-rides; surely I can get some sleep on a

seven-hour night flight to London." I hadn't counted on a four-year-old, two rows behind us, with Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Okay, so in Ontario mere psychotherapists can't offer diagnoses, but no normal child wails uncontrollably hour after hour. It made for an interesting night.

When you stagger off a plane, exhausted and jet-lagged, you really appreciate the service that bustles you onto a bus, carrying the bag lunch you've purchased at Marks & Spencer, and whisks you to Southampton Cruise Terminal and a rendezvous with your home for the next twelve days, the Caribbean Princess.

FRI 08 JUN Southampton, England

The "technical difficulties" that delayed our departure evidently continued through the night, for we wake up to the same cranes, parking lots, and ferry boats that we glimpsed on arriving. All during the day the captain assures us of his concern for our safety without ever disclosing the nature of the "technical difficulties." Meanwhile the Australian cruise director extols the myriad activities to insure a fun-filled day. We watch "The Descendents" on the big screen in the ship's theatre, then spend the afternoon reading in the lounge at the top of the ship, open to the hoi polloi during the day but reserved for Elite and Platinum guests after 5 p.m. Late in the afternoon the captain announces that problems with the bilge pumps have been corrected, and shortly thereafter our massive vessel pulls out of port.

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SAT 09 JUN St. Peter Port, Guernsey Island

The Channel Islands have passed through many foreign hands in their long history, most recently the Germans, who occupied the islands for most of World War II. But given a sunny day I prefer to leave history aside and enjoy the Candie Gardens surrounding the Guernsey Museum high above the city. A museum attendant provides a key to Victoria Tower, offering views of the island and our ship.

The climate seems especially conducive to gardening, and flower boxes bedeck both public buildings and private dwellings.

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SUN 10 JUN Cobh, Ireland Cobh (pronounced "cove") remains little changed from its days as Ireland's largest port of

emigration. A "Titanic Walking Tour" explains the city's connection that celebrated tragedy and its even closer connection with the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, when a flotilla of fishing boats from the village sought to rescue survivors.

We attend mass at St. Colman's Cathedral, a neo-gothic structure built in the latter part of the 19th

century. As usual, our favourite memories attach to unexpected moments such as the "deck of cards" houses, a "Victorian ladies" competition, a concert by the local band, or a chance encounter with the Tibetan terrier.

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MON 11 JUN Dublin, Ireland Reports claiming Dublin as the fourth most popular tourist destination in Europe have surely been

inflated by British bachelor parties. We admire the Liffey river and St. Patrick's Cathedral, and enjoy seeing whimsical statues with their irreverent local nicknames ("tart with a cart," "hags with bags,"), but find the Temple Bar area to rely rather heavily on cobblestones and past glories to offset its general tawdriness. Perhaps it's just a matter of timing—all the guidebooks recommend enjoying traditional Irish music as part of a pub crawl, an activity incompatible with our own inclination and the ship's schedule.

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But I love the colourful machinery of Dublin port.

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TUE 12 JUN Belfast, Ireland A bus carries us to Derry (on Irish maps) or Londonderry (on British), the last walled city in the

British Isles. Our guide, a member of the Derry town council, brings us up to date on the political history of the country, now divided into Ireland (member of the EU, uses Euros and metric system) and Northern Island (closely aligned with Great Britain, uses pounds and the imperial system). Our vantage point atop the city walls helps us visualize the scene 200 years ago when the troops of James II, thwarted from entering the city, besieged it. The inhabitants managed to hold out for more than a hundred days, at which point they were rescued with supplies sent by William of Orange.

We learned that the "Troubles" in Ireland go deeper than religious conflict to basic political questions: the majority (Republican) demanded one person/one vote; the minority (Unionist) didn't want toe surrender power. Murals of Bernadette Devlin reminded us of armed conflict in the 60's. The Peace Bridge across the Foyle offered a practical as well as a symbolic opportunity for opposing sides to meet.

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WED 13 JUN Glasgow, Scotland The king's wife, having an affair with a courtier, gave her lover the ring her husband had presented

her. The king, discovering the man asleep, removes the ring from his ringer and tosses it into the Clyde River, then demands that his wife produce it. She calls on Mungo, not yet the patron saint of Glasgow, who casts a fishing line into the river and reels in a fish containing the ring in its stomach. The decoration near St. Mungo's Church contains the fish and a ring along with several other symbols of Mungo's achievements.

This story and many others, we learn from the guide on our bus tour of Glasgow, Patti's father's birthplace, a city noted for its architecture both old and new, including Kelvingrove Museum, an arts centre known as "the armadillo," and a status of Lord Nelson, perennially decorated with a traffic cone.

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THU 14 JUN At Sea The Caribbean Princess, our home for twelve days, offers sit-down dinners, a constantly-changing

buffet for other meals, and a welcome place to take a nap anytime you need one. Our North American culture (schools, places of employment, even many churches) prizes extroverts—outgoing, articulate, gregarious—and tends to pathologize introverts ("Johnny seems so quiet—maybe you should have him checked."). Cruise directors cater to extrovert tastes, with poolside sports, bingo, bridge, ubiquitous music, Zumba fitness classes, kamikaze karaoke, singles ping pong, Pictionary, trivia contests, plus movies, gambling, shopping, and evening entertainment ending with Cheesy Pop Night—activities of one sort or another in every corner, a level of hyperactivity that we introverts sometimes find wearisome. Weather permitting, a solitary seat outside on the promenade deck offers an occasion to read, write, and even think, if you don't mind the roar of the ventilation system and the occasional noise of maintenance crews.

Our dinner-time table-mates, veterans of more than forty cruises, complain there isn't enough to do on board. Really! I can offer a few minor complaints of my own:

The Scottish Show featured dancers (excellent), pipes (ditto), and a piano!

The heavily amplified evening show reminds me that hearing loss is cumulative and irreversible. I'll either bring earplugs or keep my distance.

The young drummer in the Dixieland Band played a disco beat to accompany "When the Saints Go Marching In."

But these minor cavils aside, we're glad to call the Caribbean Princess home.

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FRI 15 JUN Invergordon This wee village, with its single main street and fewer then 3500 inhabitants, features a Mural

Trail, a series of paintings depicting the history of the town. The Church of Scotland hosts the Seaman's Mission, offering internet access to crews of ships docking in Cromarty Firth.

The notoriety of the Thane of Cawdor, thanks to Shakespeare's Macbeth, has enabled the current inhabitants of Cawdor Castle to attract enough visitors during the season to pay the substantial costs of keeping the place up. The castle grounds have gorgeous gardens which we enjoy despite a light drizzle.

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And there's nothing like an overcast day for photographing flowers.

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SAT 16 JUN Queensferry, Scotland Each morning at seven we are awakened by a message from the captain on the bridge, who

concludes each transmission with the words, "the captain and the crew hope you have an enjoyable day ashore." But his tone of voice says "we sincerely regret that your entire family has been wiped out in a dreadful accident." An unnerving way to begin the first day of my 70th year.

Forty-five minutes later the captain returns to the microphone to announce truly disappointing news: high winds have prevented the tenders from taking us ashore, so all excursions have been cancelled, wiping out my long anticipated plan for Edinburgh of climbing Arthur's Seat on Arthur's

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birthday. Nonetheless the ship provides birthday greetings and balloons by our door and a remarkably rich chocolate cake at dinner which I happily share with my three tablemates. The magician in the evening show displays dexterous sleight-of-hand, performing a rope trick with real style, and offering a dance with a floating table that I find lovely in its charm, grace, and whimsy.

SUN 17 JUN At Sea Back in grade school the interval between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next

seemed indeterminately long. In June, September seemed out of sight, well over the horizon. By adulthood indeterminate time seems so distant as to be virtually unimaginable. To have that gift of time sense restored has been the greatest unforeseen pleasure of this vacation. It's a gift akin to suddenly having one's sense of smell or taste replaced after a long absence. I find the calming effect of being released from time to be an incalculable blessing.

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MON 18 JUN Le Havre, France Claude Monet, whose "Impression—Sunrise" (1872) launched the Impressionist movement,

rejected academic still life painting in a studio in favour of painting outdoors. But he exercised no less control than the academicians. The famous water lily canvases required the diversion of a local tributary to create the necessary ponds on his estate at Giverny.

And Monet's paintings of flowers took place in vast gardens created specifically for that purpose.

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Among Monet's most celebrated paintings are the thirty-odd representations of Rouen Cathedral (happily without scaffolding in those days). This Anglo-Norman structure from the 13th century has a good deal more light than Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris because of the so-called "lantern windows" high in the transept tower.

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Rouen was also the site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431, a political casualty of the Hundred Years War between France and England. A hypermodern church marks the site of her immolation.

The city's celebrated clock sports a lamb at the end of its single hand, along with lamb sculptures beneath the arches.

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Altogether we find Rouen to be a charming medieval town.

TUE 19 JUN London to Copenhagen

Every trip includes a glitch or two, in this case a problem with the transfer from the ship to the

train that required us to repurchase tickets from London to Brussels. The segment from Brussels to

Cologne took us on the Thalys, a TGV (train de grande vitesse) speeding along at 186 mph and

including a meal served as on a plane.

In Cologne we step outside the station for a breath of air and find ourselves beside Cologne

Cathedral, a magnificent edifice said to be the final resting place of the three magi. As I walk the

perimeter of the building I can hear music playing--an organ recital—but no entry permitted. I

should love to return to this beautiful cathedral, for me the highlight of the day's journey.

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WED 20 JUN Copenhagen Soon after we awake in our sleeper compartment, speeding across the poppy-strewn Danish

countryside, an attendant converts our beds to seats and brings our breakfast. We begin our exploration of Copenhagen with a visit to the "Little Mermaid," the harbour statue

commemorating Hans Christian Andersen's familiar story, but a five-minute walk from our B&B, then hop on a sightseeing boat for an excellent introduction to the city offering views of the opera house, the new library, and the colourful buildings of Nyhavn.

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I've never seen such a city for unusual spires.

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THU 21 JUN Copenhagen The Tivoli Gardens are said to be most magical by night, but at the summer solstice darkness

doesn't descend until well past our bedtime. Apart from shrieks of teenagers on the big rollercoaster, this remains a remarkably peaceful place where dozens of city residents seem to have come just to enjoy the sun and the flowers.

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Christiania is a hippie haven mostly inhabited by people far too young to have known the 60's or even the 70's. The murals could easily have come from Haight-Ashbury. The community enforces a strict no-photography policy along its main avenue (or Green-Light District), along with prohibitions on hard drugs, weapons, and violence.

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FRI 22 JUN Copenhagen Rosenborg Castle is a Baroque structure full of portraits, elaborately decorated ceilings, ornate

clocks and cabinets, and a magnificent throne room. Denmark's kings erected castles the way American statesmen build presidential libraries, but no president keeps the crown jewels in a basement vault.

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Twenty-four hours of frustration and confusion upon our arrival gradually changes into an easy

familiarity with a city offering a seamless link between buses, subways and trains, where everyone speaks enough English to help you on your way, and where bicycle traffic easily matches that of cars and pedestrians.

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SAT 23 JUN Copenhagen We spend the afternoon at the Copenhagen Zoo, where we get a good deal closer to camels,

penguins and otters than we do at home, and even see an unfamiliar animal, the caracal, a cat that can leap nine feet from a standing start to snatch birds on the wing.

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SUN 24 JUN Boarding the Eurodam Undeterred by a light drizzle, we walk north along Langelinie, past "The Mutant Mermaid," to

catch a glimpse of several large cruise ships in Freeport Harbour. Later a taxi drops us off beside the Holland America Eurodam, our home for the next nine days.

Inevitably we compare this ship with the larger Caribbean Princess (roughly 2000 passengers here compared with 3000 there, although the two ships are roughly the same length). The elevators on the Eurodam always seem to arrive within a few seconds, and the food is markedly superior. My steak at dinner the first night is the best I've ever enjoyed.

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MON 25 JUN At Sea Imagine breakfast where you can choose from grapefruit, guava, cranberry, tomato, pineapple or

freshly-squeezed orange juices. Or select one of four different types of Eggs Benedict or one of four kinds of omelettes (or scrambled eggs, or various kinds of beans, sausages, ham, muffins, pastries—it goes on and on).

In the afternoon I walk three miles around the promenade deck just to burn calories. In the evening we listen to a movement from a Mozart divertimento performed by the resident string quartet—delightful—before attending the evening entertainment, a tribute to Attention Deficit Disorder with some kind of change every five seconds: rising and falling sections of the stage, a stage turntable, rear projections, flashing lights, swivelling klieg lights in changing colours, new dancers in new costumes. If this represents the 21st century, I'm clearly in the wrong era (where even acquiring a new cellphone every year barely keeps you in tune with the times.)

TUE 26 JUN Tallinn, Estonia

Picture a walled medieval city with cobblestone streets and church spires. Now imagine all the artisan studios and craft shops transformed into souvenir stores. Finally, replace all the filth, noise and coarseness of the Middle Ages with well-kept, freshly-painted buildings and friendly merchants, many in traditional Estonian dress, and you'll have a pretty good picture of Tallinn.

At St. Olaf's Church a very long spiral staircase leads to a vertiginous catwalk attached to the very edge of the roof of the church tower, offering fine views to the brave and foolish and incipient terror to an acrophobe. The simplicity of the church in particular, and the town in general, offer a pleasing contrast to the overwrought Baroque grandeur of Copenhagen's Rosenborg castle.

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In contrast to previous cities, where the cruise ship slips stealthily into the harbour by night, here we get to appreciate the approach into port, where we join four other cruise ships that sped past us yesterday to get an earlier berth.

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The Middle Ages were never really as nice as this, but I'll gladly accept the sanitized version. WED 27 JUN St. Petersburg, Russia

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I've read far too many Adam Hall espionage novels to feel completely comfortable walking around St. Petersburg. Say what you will about glasnost, the former head of the KGB still runs the country. I smile at the customs control officer who frowns at me, a typical stooge of capitalist imperialism.

Patti locates a quiet sidewalk café where we enjoy blinis for lunch, after which I try to capture the complex architecture of the Cathedral of Christ's Resurrection (or Spilt Blood Cathedral), where Alexander II was assassinated. We look upon Alexander II as an enlightened despot for freeing the serfs and introducing democratic reforms. Serf-owners and other power-holders took a different view of the situation.

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An evening tour of the Hermitage Museum avoids the huge daytime crowds. It is said that if you spent eight hours a day devoting one minute to each display in the museum, it would take you nine years to see everything, such was the collecting mania of Catherine the Great and her successors. In addition to the paintings we admire the hallways and ornate chambers of the Winter Palace that now constitutes one of the museum's buildings.

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I enjoy seeing Matisse's rendition of Collioure, where we visited last fall, and familiar scenes by Impressionist painters.

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THU 28 JUN St. Petersburg The Romanov's enjoyed palaces for every season. The Hermitage Museum occupies the old

Winter Palace. The town of Pushkin hosts the summer palace, notable for its baroque splendour, with a mirror room and an amber room featuring precious jewels pressed into the surfaces.

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Our guide claims that St. Petersburg has only thirty days a year without rain or snow. Spoken like a true Russian. Yesterday we had some clouds and an occasional drizzle but otherwise clear skies and sun. According to the strict Russian standard this counts as a bad day. By my standards our trip has had terrific weather. So it rains once in awhile. I count only one discouraging downpour.

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FRI 29 JUN Helsinki, Finland Monty Python got it right: "Finland, Finland, Finland, Finland has it all." I could not have

predicted that this would be my favourite day of the trip. As we get off the ship shuttle a pleasant young woman offers us a package including two hop-on/hop-off bus tours and a one-hour boat tour that gives us a rare view of icebreakers. Perfect.

Between tours we enjoy lunch at an outdoor bazaar: reindeer and moose meatball accompanied by bear and pig sausage. I bolt from the table at the sound of a snazzy drum cadence to join a parade featuring a military band with first-rate instrumentalists.

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Remember Marimekko? At a Marimekko store we decide on a table cloth to provide a daily reminder of an extraordinary day.

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SAT 30 JUN Stockholm, Sweden A gray, rainy day threatens to dampen our spirits, but if you think of Stockholm as Seattle—where

only a major deluge can alter one's plans for an excursion—everything seems propitious. Eventually the sun comes out and confirms our sense of Stockholm as the most beautiful city of our trip, a city of 14 islands whose area embraces 30% waterways and 30% parks and green spaces. From the cobblestoned Old Town to the pleasure island (once royal hunting grounds), good taste reigns. Our bus tour ticket enables us to hop off just in time for the changing of the guard at the palace.

It's hard not to look at the Scandinavian countries with envy:

High progressive taxes financing social services ranging from universal health care and free higher education to first-rate unified public transit

Recognition, protection and accommodation of cyclists

Public financing of radio, television and cinema (at a time when the Conservative regime in Canada attempts to destroy CBC through "death by a thousand cuts")

The lowest level of economic inequality in the world, accompanied by a strong sense of trust and a feeling of community that happily extends to visitors.

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Yesterday we waited at a hop-on/hop-off bus-stop when a bus operated by a rival firm arrived. Instead of making us wait for the proper bus, the driver invited us to jump on. Hard to visualize in Toronto or New York.

Having the cruise ship available for breakfasts, dinners and lodging helps to relieve the high cost of living in these countries, twice the prices we'd pay in Toronto, itself one of the most expensive cities in North America.

The German Lutheran Church (with its sign, "Praise God, Honour the King") has stained glass windows depicting common folk in prayer ("Give us this day our daily bread," reads one of the inscriptions), and two pipe organs, neither of which would they let me play.

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Returning to the ship we enjoy watching the long transit from Stockholm harbour along the archipelago of 24,000 islands to the sea, past dozens of summer cottages in the "land of the midnight sun."

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SUN 01 JUL Canada Day At Sea JC, our cruise director, announces a day jam-packed with exciting activities to keep us hopping

from morning until midnight. JC, we learn, works sixteen-hour days, seven days a week, for four months, followed by a two-month break, with the first month devoted to catching up on sleep. Those of us who look upon a day at sea as an opportunity for peaceful reflection and recuperation find it a challenge to avoid the onslaught that has brought a shopping bazaar to the swimming pool and loud trivia games, bingo and a lecturer to our usual retreat in the Crows Nest. Happily we discover a hidden sanctum in the Silk Den, amidships on the highest deck, where you can recline on a divan and listen to gentle Oriental music in the background.

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MON 02 JUL Warnemünde, Germany "German" and "beach town" may not be terms you would commonly put together, but we spend

the day in Germany's answer to Cape Cod, full of canal-side shops, restaurants, and a lighthouse, with cobblestone streets leading to an Evangelical Lutheran church and more tourist shops. Despite the number of people, the little quayside streets remains peaceful and I rejoice in the absence of amplified sound. Murmured conversations fail to overpower the sounds of seagulls and other birdsong.

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The narrated one-hour harbour cruise delivers precisely what it advertises: for sixty minutes the captain recites, in rapid German, the gross tonnage, length and destination of every ship, the height and lifting power of every crane, the dredge dates and depths of every section of the harbour. I'm afraid to ask whether anyone finds this fascinating.

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In the evening we listen to a German band perform beside the swimming pool: 3 trumpets, 2 clarinets, 3 tubas and drums playing marches and polkas. Then I spend a magical hour and a half in the Explorers Lounge listening to the ship's resident string quartet play Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Haydn and Brahms. At a distance of ten feet you really get to appreciate the spatial element of live (unamplified!) performance. Every once in awhile, movement in the window catches one's eye as a giant liner pulls past our ship. Then the movement turns out to be trees —we ourselves are leaving port.

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TUE 03 JUL Kiel, Germany Our tour guide entertains us in an accent and style reminiscent of singer/ comedienne Anna

Russell. ("The architecture of Kiel is positively repellent. The builders of these atrocious buildings have much to atone for. But they were all good Lutherans, so their sins will never be forgiven.")

Small towns like Eutin, spared from bombing during the Second World War, maintain a good deal of their old charm. The Schleswig-Holstein sector of North Germany was governed by the king of Denmark, who encouraged small towns to beautify themselves by growing roses. Evidence of his subjects' obedience abounds.

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St. Michael's Church, in the centre of town, has a nice organ being practiced, during my visit, by the woman whose face appears in the small mirror.

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After listening to the string quartet perform Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and a Haydn quartet, ever the history professor, I remind the young musicians that in the 18th century any self- respecting nobleman would have employed a string quartet and that, indeed, the opus they had just performed had been composed by Haydn for Prince Esterhazy. I doubt that many string quartets find permanent employment nowadays by wealthy patrons but, thanks to them, for nine days I have enjoyed the perquisites of a nobleman. Of all the peculiar pleasures of this cruise, I shall miss this one the most.

At our pre-debarkation briefing, JC repeats favourite questions that, believe it or not, he has received from passengers:

Does this elevator go to the front of the ship?

Will I get wet on the snorkelling tour?

How small does your face need to be for the mini-facial?

Does the crew sleep onboard the ship?

How do I know if the photos in the gallery are mine?

What do you do with the ice carvings after they melt?

Does the ship generate its own electricity?

What's the religion of the people with the patch behind their ears?

Have you seen my husband?

(Referring to the changing day-of-the-week mats on the elevators) Is it the same day of the week on every floor?

And special advice: when leaving your suitcases outside your door, don't forget to leave out something to wear in the morning.

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WED 04 JUL Copenhagen We've come up with a new slogan: "Edit out the pain. (And for what you can't edit out, there's

EMDR.)" A wondrously sunny extra day in Copenhagen allows me to retake all the photos originally in clouds, to climb the tower with the outdoor spiral staircase at the top, and listen to the organist practice.

I'd been wondering about "Gefion," the name of our opulent B&B. Today I see the fountain depicting the legend of Copenhagen's creation. The king of Sweden promised Gefion the territory she could plow in one night. So Gefion turned her four sons into oxen to plow the island of Zealand on which the city of Copenhagen is located.

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And as I rewrite this account, I've deleted all the horrible bits. To a certain extent, you get to decide what you want to remember.